Sunday, June 1, 2014
Joseph Somoza
Living Theater
The sprinkler continues sending out its
arcs of gleaming water that
gravity converts to puddles.
It’s like a story being told,
like the hero stories sung
continuously the thirty nights of Ramadan.
A fly lands on a sunny portion
of my notebook as I’m writing,
sitting in my yard in the denim shirt I wore
waiting on a bench for the museum
to open in Madrid after we had had
tostadas with café con leche—
years ago,
which translates to a million moments
such as this, each one a link to then,
and then.
“And then?” the storyteller
pauses for effect,
unlike the way the story actually
unfolds,
each fold releasing all its secrets
naturally, necessarily,
without melodrama.
***
Out of Order
Because we weren’t tired, I guess,
we got up, dressed,
and drove through the dark town
to have breakfast.
It was the time to be tired in this
middle-class town. The owners
of the cars that would’ve been
crowding the streets were still
sleeping. A homeless man rested his
head next to his coffee cup at IHOP
when we walked in. Even the one
waitress told us how tired she was,
working the graveyard shift.
The coffee she poured to “warm up”
our coffee wasn’t
any warmer. You’d think you could get
coffee hot on a cold night, especially when
paying two dollars for it.
But the waitress knew the night
was for sleeping. Who were we
making demands, disturbing
the town’s rest at 5 a.m.?
***
***
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